The App: App-ocalypse (1)

Day 44 - Sticking to the plan

They found Edmund.

It wasn't hard to find him. He passed out on the road so he was basically looking like a Sleeper. Except all the Sleepers have disappeared from the road a long time ago. We learnt more about that mystery thanks to Sebastian.

He is actually a great guy. I stayed with Anna and Melissa at the old factory when he went to look for Edmund. He went back first. He hadn't found him but he had come back with more food and some medicine for Anna's shoulder. See, a great guy!

Anna was asleep so he gave the medicine to me and decided to chat with me a bit more. This was really cool. He must have at least ten years more than me so he would never have talked to me under "normal" circumstances. Of course, there is no "normal" anymore so it shouldn't surprise me that much that he was nice to me.

We talked for a long time while Melissa was doing crosswords. Yes, crosswords. It's still a thing for her. She stole them at the local store and is filling up her days with them. It also surprised me but after all she is one of the lucky few to still have access to her hobbies after the App-ocalypse. Well done.

As we were talking, Sebastian mentioned the street being deserted and I asked him about that. Indeed they saw what happened from where they were. They had lose their children but not their minds. Their entire group watched the army coming back to their town and taking off all the Sleepers from the streets. They were only a dozen of men but they cleaned up the streets extremely quickly. They spent a day in their city then disappeared forever.

There was an incident that day. Of course there was. Nathan and William tried to kidnap one of the military guy to know where their children were. It didn't work because the guy had a gun. He shot Nathan and almost killed him. He would have but Rose threw herself at him when she saw the guy aiming at her husband. He missed his shot and Nathan was only superficially harmed.

The three of them ran away after William successfully and luckily took care of their enemy, hearing the rest of the army coming for them. They hid pretty well and succeeded not to get caught by them. Sebastian wasn't really clear about what happened exactly but I can't blame him. It was probably a traumatic experience and it was like a month ago. They must had done a lot of things since.

He was telling me this story when Xia, Nathan & Rose came back with Edmund. When he got out of the bus, I noticed Nathan making a funny face under the helmet of his protective suit. He was still feeling pain from his wound in the abdomen. I know it's stupid but it reassured me. I'm still not feeling a 100% safe with them. They are strangers after all.

Edmund was still passed out when they arrived so Sebastian took care of him in another room of the factory. He finally woke up and told us what happened to him: he got lost and couldn't find his way back. He was thirsty and so he finally fainted.

Well done, Edmund. I expected better from him. We gave him water and food and now he's fine. So fine he is actually driving me toward New-York right now, after a final nap. It was about time but we decided to go there and we were always going. Michael is still waiting for us.

Well, at least I hope he is waiting for us. If he doesn't then it means he lost all hope and I don't want him to lose his faith. He's a child he shouldn't live things like that. Rose and Elaine are harpies when it comes to that topic. Elaine is especially violent when we talk about what her son must live. He is five years-old so I doubt they can train him the same way they were training Michael but she was horrified to hear what happened to Michael because she was figuring her son instead of him.

Which is something I can't blame her for. I'm still a bit scared about her – not the way Anton is scared of William though. Will is the one who was hitting Anton when they questioned him, so of course there is still something weird between them. Anton isn't so scared anymore but he is easily startled when Will is around. I tried to consider it a funny thing but I think it is one of the reason I can't feel safe around them. They tortured us. They had their reasons of course, but there is still some... I don't know, resentment? Antipathy? Well, there is still something between us & them.

Anyway we're all going to New York. We stole four cars in the city, plus the bus. Nathan, Will, Georges and Edmund are all driving a car, and Xia is driving the bus. Anton is with me in Edmund's car. Will is with Elaine, Nathan with Rose, Georges is alone and the other girls are on the bus. We took too many cars because we didn't want to be stopped by yet another flat tire or anything else for that matter. It was also a great way to divide food and supplies. And a perfect way to carry more of them.

We decided to go to New-York and to stop as soon as we hit the first big building. The plan is to go up one of the building and to look for any activity with Seb's binoculars. We all know perfectly now it is not a great plan but it is the only good plan we could think of. We'll stick with it and we'll see where it leads us. Hopefully it will quickly leads us to Michael.

I had a nightmare last time I slept. Michael had changed, he was trained as a military guy. We found him but he wasn't happy about it and he was killing Anna. Then a dog came to eat Anna. That's when I realised I was having a bad dream. I don't have to wonder a lot to know how something this sick could cross my mind after all we've seen those last days.

As a matter of fact, I'm a bit terrified about going to New-York because of what we could see there. I still have vivid images of all the corpses in Austin and I don't want to live that again. Except I'm willingly going to live something way worse: there are obviously a lot more corpses in New-York than in Austin.

I must not think about that. To distract myself, I'm trying to decipher the message Anna's phone received through the App. I'm obiously not succeeding. I'm guessing it's a code in which each letter represents...

I'm going to stop writing now because Anton just figured out that our car had a working CD player. It's the first time in a long time that I'm hearing music and even though I don't know that song I just want to close my eyes and appreciate it.